Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1057: How to Get Stronger for Fat Loss & Muscle Building

Episode Date: June 20, 2019

In this episode of Mind Pump, Sal, Adam and Justin discuss strength... what it is, why it's important and how to build it. Why is strength an important thing? (1:20) The different types of strength. (4:22) What does it mean to be STRONG? (8:24) The importance of the central nervous system to maximize strength and skill. (13:37) Ways to get STRONGER. (24:16) Doing the RIGHT exercises to get stronger. (30:03) How mobility gets confused with flexibility. (37:45) The proper diet for strength. (39:30) Reasons why you are NOT getting stronger. (40:55) People Mentioned Mike Salemi (@mike.salemi)  Instagram John Brenkus (@johnbrenkus_)  Twitter Ronnie Coleman (@ronniecoleman8)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned June Promotion: MAPS Strong ½ off!! **Code “STRONG50” at checkout** Mind Pump 955: John Brenkus- 6x Emmy-Award Winning Creator, Host, & Producer of Sport Science Mind Pump TV - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Alright, so this is another one of our episodes where we cover one topic, and this is probably one of our favorite topics to cover. We talk all about strength, how to get stronger, and why it's important to get stronger, regardless of your goal. So we talk about everything from what strength is, of course, why it's important, ways to get strong in terms of your workout, problems, and issues that people have when they're trying

to get stronger in terms of their exercise program, What are the obstacles that get people's way? If you're trying to get stronger, which if you're working out or if you have any fitness goals whatsoever, you should be trying to do, you're going to love this episode. Also before we start this episode, maps strong, one of our most effective muscle building, strength building, and metabolism building programs is 50% off. So here's what you got to do. Go to mapsstrong.com, M-A-P-S-S-T-R-L-N-G.com and use the code strong 50. S-T-R-L-N-G, 5.0, no space for the discount. Get strong.

All right, guys, let's talk about the most important fundamental aspect of performance, the foundational aspect, strength, strength. Let's talk all about strength. Ooh, I can't wait, I've been talking so much about nutrition. I knew you were gonna be excited. Thank goodness. This episode is for justice.

It is, we did the point. This is what got me into personal training. It's just about the strength. No, you know, it's actually a good, it sounds simple and whatever, but this is a good question. It's like, why is strength even important? Why is it an important thing?

I think it's important for people to understand that strength is the foundational physical pursuit. It's the one physical pursuit that will contribute positively to all the other physical pursuit. It's the one physical pursuit that will contribute positively to all the other physical pursuits. So to be a little bit more clear, if you became more flexible, you would not necessarily increase or improve your endurance and stamina. You would not necessarily increase or improve your maximal strength or your speed or your power. It may improve some of those things if flexibility was holding you back,

but it doesn't necessarily contribute to those. If you work on your stamina and your endurance, you won't necessarily improve your functional flexibility or your strength or your explosive ability. Now strength is different. Strength, if you improve your strength properly, it actually makes everything else better. A somebody who's stronger has better,

and I mean in appropriate ways, right, done properly, has better functional flexibility, meaning the ability to own and control longer ranges of motion. A person who just wants endurance, if we gave him more strength, would have more endurance, because being stronger means you fatigue at a much, takes you much longer just to fatigue. Yeah, it's a fundamental foundational thing you can build off of, And that's why I think that people need to really consider that as one of the utmost important aspects of training or constructing a training program in general

is to base it around the strength. And then any pursuit from there, you're really gonna help to flourish. That's it. And if you do any type of physical pursuit, any type of sport that requires any physicality, even ones that you think that strength aren't that important. Like, let's say you're an ultra endurance runner, like you're running, you know, 50 miles

or 100 miles at a time, that person would even benefit from a small improvements in strength. It's just super, super important that people understand this, because I think people relegate strength to strength athletes and bodybuilders. Like if I'm not one of them, or they think size of muscle, like that's the only thing that determines strength. That's a great point.

So let's talk about, I guess, the different types of, because strength, technically we can break it down into different types of strength, right? There's absolute strength, which is what I think most people are familiar with, which is the ability to just lift super heavy weight. So like, you know, if, like, for example, if I could deadlift 600 pounds and Adam could deadlift, you know, 500 pounds, I have more absolute strength than he would in that particular exercise, right? So that's what that, that's the strength that most people are familiar with.

Well, to that point too, it's one of the best ways to measure progress. Sometimes it can be really tough if you have a fitness goal, like losing body fat and belly muscle. A lot of people come into the gym, they get started in a majority of people would say, yeah, I'd like to put some muscle on, and yes, I'd like to lose some body fat, and they start their routine.

And because maybe they're inflamed, or maybe because they're losing a little bit of body fat, and they're also building muscle. And also, you're your biggest critic, and the scale could be throwing you off. The mirror could even be throwing you off a little bit. Meanwhile, if you're eating well, you're training well, and you're seeing your strength go up,

it's one of the best indicators that you're... It's a super good sign. Right, that you're heading down the right path, and in fact, a lot of my clients, I would teach to not get so hung up on the scale and the way we look because we were just, man, we were walking to lunch today and talking about old videos that we were looking at just since we've even started Mind Pump and Sal made a comment about, oh, there's one video I was off and I didn't remember how shredded I was looking

I was like, yeah, you know, I was watching a video, same thing one of our old YouTube videos and didn't realize how jacked I was during at it, I was like, yeah, you know, I was watching a video, same thing, one of our old YouTube videos and didn't realize how Jack that was during that time. And it's funny that how we play these psychological games with ourselves and it's hard for us to be objective when we look or subjective when we look at our own body all the time. And so one of the best, I think, ways to track good progress in the gym is actually to really pay attention to your overall strength. I think that's a very good indicator that you're heading in the right direction. That's the first question I ask. If somebody asks me, hey, do you think my program is good? And I'll next question I'll always ask him, are you getting stronger?

Because oftentimes if you're getting stronger, it means you're doing something right. You're doing some things right. You know, I'm getting leaner. And am I eating enough calories? I'm losing weight. And I'll say, well, are you getting stronger? And I'll say, well, actually, I'm getting stronger. Well, you're doing great then.

If you're getting stronger while you're getting leaner, you're really kicking ass. That's a very, very good point. I talked about absolute strength, which is I think what most people understand a strength. But there's other types of strength, too. There's also explosive strength, which is the ability to move with maximal power

in a short period of time. And there's also isometric strength, the ability to hold something for long periods of time. Like if I were hanging off a bar, that would be my isometric strength of the muscles in my hands. But all of those, you know, just getting stronger helps all of those things. If I just get stronger, I'm probably gonna get more explosive

and I'm also gonna get better isometric strength. Do you think that you would categorize durability in there also? Oh, dude. Of course, think about it. If you're, think about anything you've ever done that was grueling and hard, do you anything you've ever done that was growing in hard, do you think you would have lasted longer

or been more durable or had more heart? You know, the boxers would call it heart if you were stronger? Well, if you think about that connection, too, of, you know, mind and muscle and like, being able to, you know, have that mental fortitude, that really does contribute back into the strength and a lot of times athletes they'll lean heavy on that fact alone that their mental attitude and ways of getting through

the objects has a substantial effect on its own. That's right. Now that we've made the case for strength, we should talk about different ways to get stronger, or what it means exactly. Because I think when people look at strength, they tend to think of just muscle. Like, okay, if I have bigger muscles, then I'm gonna be stronger. It's not necessarily true.

It's not true at all. I mean, when we look at your Olympic lifters, it's one of the things that, you know, I think as a young lifter coming up and probably as a kid, you look at the size of muscle and as a kid, you think, oh, he must be really strong. You just think, I think that just, it seems logical to think that, right? But when you, as you start to get around the strength, community and fitness and people working out and you start to meet more and more people that are very actually unassuming

because they don't have these massive but they're incredibly strong. And it was a great example of that, that we know. Yeah, Mike. Mike's the lemmy. Yeah, one of the strongest dudes you'll ever meet and he's like, he doesn't look like he's one of the strongest guys.

He looks like a fit dude. Yeah. Super, super strong. Yeah, there's a lot of things that contribute. Now, muscles do contribute to it, obviously, because they're what's contracting. And a bigger muscle does contract harder than a smaller muscle.

So that part is true, but there's also the skill involved with strength. There's the muscles working together to accomplish a particular feat that makes you stronger. There's leverage that'll make people stronger. Refining in on the process, like you'd mentioned, in terms of the practicing, that neurologically establishes a louder signal that you can apply to that movement which then allows for more strength to happen. Oh, I remember this.

This doesn't happen so much as an adult, but I remember when I was a kid, I don't know if you guys ever experienced this, where you just start lifting weights and you're getting all into it, and then you miss some workouts, and then you go back, and you get on the bar and then, da-da- it, shakes. Yeah, as you're lower in the bar.

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, totally. That's not because the muscles all of a sudden just became like, didn't work anymore. That's your central nervous system. Your CNS is not firing as smoothly or as a troll. Doesn't recognize it as immediately

as it did when you were going through those movements consistently. Yeah, and a lot of strength is due to your central nervous system, which is really the controlling mechanism behind your muscles. It's what tells your muscles to contract harder or not as hard and how to contract all your muscles to contract in a particular pattern.

It also tells your muscles when they need to relax and be loose, believe it or not, that has a piece in strength. One thing you'll find in athletes who are able to exhibit lots of strength over and over again is their ability to relax in between bouts of maximal performance. That's why they're able to do it over and over again without fatigue. Oh yeah, that's the most interesting thing, I think that, I think it was John Brinkis that brought up the difference between like the super athletes and just the regular athletes is the fact

that they could stay calm and they can have those moments where they do. They don't have the same nerves under pressure. Right, right. In regular training, trains your central nervous system as it's training your muscles. So you're not just training the muscle and getting the muscle to adapt by becoming stronger.

You're also training the central nervous system to know how to fire more effectively. And also, you're giving your body the confidence to fire with more power. I mean, here's a, and we've covered this in past podcasts, but highly trained athletes are able to exhibit or pull out like 90 something percent but highly trained athletes are able to exhibit or pull out like 90 something percent of their potential of strength.

In other words, if you look at, if they were like a meter measuring how much strength you could put out, highly, highly trained athletes, like Olympic athletes could almost max it out. The average person, 60%, 50%. 50, yes. They could try as hard as they want, but their body will only let them tap into about 50%

because their body doesn't have the confidence that it can go harder. It actually, it's got like this protecting mechanism where it dampens the, it's like a speed limit or a car. We all have governing. Yeah, we all have that governing. And that's why we always bring up mobility

as such an integral piece to this entire process, because if your body it all recognizes any kind of instability in a joint. It's not going to open up the ability to now flood in this excess amount of force to apply towards that joint, because it's just not safe. It knows that that's gonna be potentially injury driven. Yeah, and to overcome that governing system, you have to train your body to be more comfortable

with exerting that much force, or you have to be in an extremely stressful situation. There's been stories of people lifting cars off of the load ones or doing crazy feats of strength. And he's like, how did that happen? Well, they were so like, their bodies like overrided. Yeah, their bodies like, we're going to tear some muscles.

We don't care. This is a survival. You know, we can't all resources at once. That's right. So when talking about training the central nervous system and that being important to strength, what are some examples of that with the average gym goer who's going in the gym and lifting weights? Like, what does that mean to them? So, anytime you're lifting weights, you're training the central nervous system. Anytime

you get better at lifting, because... But, the caveat to that is that there is exercises that lend itself better to... Or ways of doing it. Yes. So, that's the point that I'm trying to get at is like, just just because you lift weights doesn't necessarily mean you're maximizing the training towards you. You may actually be creating worse patterns that you're refining. Yeah. There's, if you look at strength athletes, Olympic, I like looking at Olympic athletes because most of the science that's gone into resistance training or most of the money and time that's gone into studying,

resistance training has gone into Olympic lifting because it's been an Olympic sport. And for a while there, you had the two biggest world superpowers back in those days was the Soviet Union in the US. Now it's like China in the US. And these communist countries invest a lot of science into how to make their athletes better than ours because they look at the Olympics like a way of demonstrating their superiority or whatever.

And so when you look at some of the old studies that came out of like, you know, behind the iron curtain, they would say, you find that it's a lot of frequency and it's sub maximal intensity. It's practicing a lift. It's not going into the gym and beating yourself up. So an example would be the difference between doing a super hard leg workout once or twice a week versus doing a little bit of leg stuff and just practicing your technique every single

day. The every single day style of training or whatever, the more frequent style of training seems to train the central nervous system a little bit better. You get better and better and better at of training or whatever, the more frequent style of training seems to train the central nervous system a little bit better. You get better and better and better at that squat or whatever and you see strength games go through the roof. And so when you look at like, how do we stress the muscle? Intensity really stresses the muscle. You go too far with that. Then you can cause a central nervous system to not adapt as well because it has to have time to recover. So in other words, just adding more weight or lifting harder

doesn't necessarily translate always into more strength. And sometimes lifting lighter and better and more controlled and working on technique actually can contribute to strength as much or sometimes even more. Totally. Think about it this way, Adam. You're squat, which for the long term listeners know that your squat looks nothing like I used to. It's a totally different squat. You

are now currently have way less muscle than you did when you first started with us, right? But you could squat more. Or close to. Or close to, right? What's that from? Yeah. It's your technique. Your skill and your technique of the squat has made you that much stronger. You learn this real fast, by the way, if you've ever worked with veteran blue collar workers, you learn real fast how the technique and the patterns that their central nervous system is picked up, how big of a roll that plays in strength. You carry around some planks of wood or buckets of cement

with guys who are in their sixties. I think for the most part, people think that that just means they get good at it. But what does that mean? Like I think breaking it down all the way or distilling it all the way is like you've actually trained your central nervous system to become more efficient. And that plays such a great role in the strength, which is I love. And I know I've repeated it so many times because I think it was one of the most impactful things that you ever shared on this podcast for me because I've always had a hard time explaining the central nervous system, the importance of it, the role of it in working out to the average person. And when you gave the analogy of think of your central nervous system like an amplifier to speakers

and your speakers as muscles and anybody that understands how that works, you can't play speakers without an amplifier. They're both essential to making music or sound or whatever. So knowing that and then thinking about, okay, if my central nervous system is like an amp, the stronger that amp is, the better sound, the bigger speakers I can power. So when you think of it like that, that makes a lot more sense to me like, oh wow, that's so important not to neglect that piece of it. Otherwise, I'm just going out buying big-ass subwoofers, but I'm not spending any time really trying to

build. And you may even have like a really high output, amplitude type amp. It has a high capacity for, but you're not using force. Yeah, but you're not using it or you can't properly distribute it. Like say, there's interruptions in that process to where it dampens the signal a bit down the kinetic chain.

And so if you think about that, like having joints that aren't functioning the way they're supposed to be working, you know, that's gonna, the signal, you're not gonna get the most out of that. And so to be efficiently going through these movements and have, you know, access to that amount of power, I mean, all of that plays a role.

Right, and think about, because I know a lot of people listening might be thinking like, well, I just wanna look better, I want bigger muscles, it's cool to be strong, but I wanna really look good. Well, here's a deal, just like using the same analogy, you are not able to fully express the capacity of your speakers without a powerful amplifier.

So, you are not able to fully activate your muscles and the muscle fibers to get them to adapt without an effective central nervous system signal. Now some people may say, well, look at bodybuilders. Bodybuilders aren't as strong as powerlifters or Olympic lifters and they have big muscles. That's where you're wrong. A bodybuilder has a very effective central nervous system. They just have made it effective for a particular, for different types of movements. Bodybuilders know how to isolate and contract muscles harder than any other strength athlete

in the world. A bodybuilder can squeeze their lats when doing a lap pull down and get their central nervous system to connect to the lats and express them to the fullest capacity way more than an Olympic lifter or a power lifter. They've just trained it in a different way.

They've just trained their central nervous system to maximize the expression of individual muscles to get hypertrophy to get that muscle growth. Well, I'll try not to get lost in the weeds with that, but that's definitely something that, you know, with bodybuilders is an attribute. That's something they can have access to tensing up muscles and to be able to really hold poses

and get the most out of the squeeze of the muscle to wear like a strength athlete. Like that's not gonna be as beneficial so they've learned to turn off a lot of that to where like I can generate the most force in certain parts of the lift and then turn off and allow that free flow of the movement and then you know, re that free flow of the movement and then reestablish it so I can get gain control.

Absolutely. You watch an Olympic lifter do a really, really amazing, beautiful, clean. And you'll see if you watch the slow motion video, you'll see like maximal power output in a moment. Right. Right. Split second of relaxation in the arms and in the lower body, pop into position, tense up again and explode all over again. So that's 100% right.

So so the key here is, I guess the point we're making is if you're focusing on strength, it's going to, yes, it's going to be awesome for your physical performance, but it's also going to be awesome for the your aesthetics. Your ability to contract harder or move more weight is going to positively influence the way you look. And because strength is objective, you either get stronger or you don't. Like Adam said, it's one of the best measurements. Sometimes the mirror lies to you. I know we all lie to ourselves. I could look at myself in the mirror and think I look better or worse. And I probably look the same in the mirror and think I look better or worse, and I probably look the same

because of the subjective nature. When you're lifting more, you're not. You're either strong or you aren't. That's one of my favorites. That's why it's one of my favorite things. Well, and since we're all closing the circle on this central nervous system talk, one of the best things that I've taught clients to do, especially somebody who loves chasing strength, loves adding weight, loves me one of the, and personally, and it took me a long time to drill this home for myself, was to be okay with going in and working with 50% of my load, really, really light going in and just because I can squat 400 pounds,

it's an ego check to go in and work with 135, but it's one of the best things, believe it or not, sometimes to build great strength. And that seems kind of counterproductive for somebody who's measuring their strength, purely just by how much they're stacking on the barbell. When it's like, hey, me going in and deciding that, hey, this week or these next two weeks is all about the skill. And so I'm going to light my load way up so I can concentrate at the bottom of the squat,

thinking about exactly where I wanna feel my weight distributed on my feet, the way I engage my glutes, the way I tighten my core, the way I come out of the hole, the way I come down in the squat, like using that as a tool still to build strength in. And I think that's tough for the average gym goer who loves to push

and to push the limits all the time and they're always thinking it's putting it out of way to it. I love to take that client, especially when I could visually see a breakdown, right? Which is common. How often do you guys walk in the gym and just see this absolutely beautiful squat? It's pretty rare.

It's very, very rare. So when I close the compliment that person right away. Right, and so what I love is that when I meet somebody who loves to build strength and is heading down that, and then I assess a squad or a deadlift and a big compound lift and I see breakdown and they want to get stronger. And I go, okay, what we're going to do to get stronger is I want you to peel down 200 pounds off of that. And what we're going to really work on your technique At sometimes I think that's hard for the average person to compute

But let me tell you one of the most beneficial things that you can do to get stronger is sometimes to reduce the weight and Really perfect the technique. Yeah, you don't have to PR all the time. Right. No, you don't That's a good one Justin. Yeah, well, I I tell you what, if here's another thing with strength, if you're looking to speed up your metabolism, increasing your strength or watching your strength go up, usually a positive sign. And so oftentimes when I'm working with clients and trying to get their metabolism to speed up,

and they're asking me, I don't know if my metabolism is speeding up or I'm doing the reverse diet or whatever. I always follow up with, are you getting stronger? If they're getting stronger, usually means that their metabolism is moving in the direction that they want, which is to kind of speed up.

All right, so let's talk about ways to get stronger. First and foremost, I think one of the best ways to keep yourself progressing in strength is to phase through different rep ranges. Oh, love, love that tip also because one, I remember being this kid who stayed in a phase, right? I wanted to get stronger, I wanted to get bigger. All the magazines told me I should be working in this rep range. And so since that was what all the material, education material that I was reading was telling me,

I assume that I stayed in that forever. And I was always gonna lift in this six rep range to get bigger and stronger. And in a short window, that makes sense why you do that. But when you take somebody over six weeks, 12 weeks, 24 weeks, and you keep going on. It stops working.

One of the best things that you can do to get stronger, is to lighten the load up and go to 15 to 20 reps. Right, right, right. Or the opposite, if you're somebody who has been constantly lifting in the 15 rep ranges to go the other direction. Now, here's the thing though, when it comes to strength, because remember strength is also a lot of skill is involved.

In other words, getting good at a particular rep range or a particular exercise, it makes sense to stay in a rep range for at least a few weeks. So you don't want to get stuck in this trap, which not saying that you're not going to get any results or progress if you do it this way, it's just not as effective if you do it this way, where you're doing different rep ranges every week or same workout.

Or same workout. Like, oh, I'm doing, I'm going to do five reps for bench press, but then I'm doing 12 reps for this and I'm doing 25 reps for this. It's better to stay within a particular rep range, get good at that rep range. Yeah. After a few weeks, phase out of it, switch to a different rep range. That right there is one of the best methods I've found, a single method. There's a lot of different things you can change, but that's one of the best single methods. I've found it. I've found it properly assessed, you know, whether or not you are actually, like, you're

doing things that have, like, benefit to them. Like, you are seeing strength and you can pinpoint it back to that. That's right. And then, of course, progressive overload, which is the, I mean, gosh, that's the crux of resistance training, isn't it? Like, being able to do more over time than you did before, that's what gets the body to change. And I love this for somebody who's not just in the pursuit of getting stronger, but also

changing physically, because in my experience, and this was what, where I think I had a lot of success when I got into competing and body was what, where I think I had a lot of success when I got into competing and bodybuilding and where I had to, where I was being judged, show after show at my improving my physique, it really was the first time ever in my life that I started to track volume. I never, I understood the importance of volume,

kind of paid attention to it here and there, but never like diligently tracked and tried to progressively overload and continue to add weight, right, over week over week. And when I started to do that, I realized, well, and I also noticed tendencies. And it explained a lot to me on probably why I got stuck in plateaus in earlier years of lifting,

where, you know, and anybody who's listening right now could probably relate to this. You know, sometimes you're just in the zone. You got... You're gonna do extra five sets, right? Yeah, three weeks in a row. You're crushing the workouts and you're doing all this great stuff. And, man, you notice change in your body and you're feeling things.

And then, you know, maybe you have a week or two where you still were training and you're still were training hard, but then you don't really see much change. And when you actually go back and you track through all those periods and you're still we're training hard, but then you don't really see much change and when you actually go back and you You track through all those periods and you do it enough times you start to see these patterns and with the patterns that I would notice myself is You know one week I would just have higher volume. I'd be low overloading the body more I'll be adding more more reps. I felt I got an extra rep out I did an extra exercise and then this next week I got busy or I cut a little shore I wasn't filling up to it and then when you started measuring it's like oh well

That's why I did 10,000 pounds of volume this week and then the next week I did 11,000 pounds But then week three I went back to 10,000 five hundred pounds. It takes a mystery It takes a lot of the mystery out why your body's progressing and up progressing When you're able to track stuff like that and the other thing too with by, by tracking volume, that's really good, is that you can incrementally increase your volume. So instead of going in one week and then going in the next week and being gung ho and doubling your volume, I can be like, oh, cool, I only need to go up

500 pounds a week or however you calculate your volume. And that's what I see all the time. And this is also why I don't like the you know the all the motivation crap and all the Beast mode because what it does is and tell me you guys weren't like this, you know Were you not the kid who just watched that Ronnie Coleman workout video today? Yeah, I play crazy and that workout all of a sudden you go from the guy who was doing a total of 4,000 pounds of volume on his legs in a workout, it's also an 8,000 that week.

And then you just can't maintain that week over week because you didn't slowly build up to that. So you steep of a slope and how do you explain calculating volume again at the time? It's reps, times set, times weight. There you go. So you multiply the three of those and then that gives you the total volume. Yeah, that's why we're using a. You get to work out for a day. Yeah, for the day.

So if I do five sets of squats, just say 200 pounds, right? So say five sets of squats for five reps, you go five times five times two hundred times 200 pounds, whatever weight you're moving, and that gives you your total volume. And so and I would, and here's it for people that are interested in tracking this. It's just like diet. You can get really crazy and start separating. Yeah, you don't need to go that far. You don't.

I like to take the major lifts, right? I would be tracking my bench, I'd be tracking my overhead press, I'd be tracking my deadlift, my squat, and that's where I would try and would be the majority of what I'm trying to overload week over week. And you'll see a big change in that. Now speaking of exercises,

I think it's important to talk about, you know, exercises themselves and the importance of getting stronger and the right exercises, because if I get a lot stronger in my dumbbell curl, it's not gonna have nearly the same impact on my bodies if I get stronger in my deadlift. Some exercises just make a bigger impact

on your overall body and your goals. And those are the exercises that are probably more important that you focus on in terms of strength. Well, this reminds me of something that happened to me when we first started My Impump. So I've shared the story of, you know, I never really lifted, squatted and deadlifted really heavy for most of my training career

until I got, until I got into my pump hanging out with Sal and Justin and it started with me trying to chase your deadlift and try to catch up to you. And when that became a priority, a lot of the other exercises that I was doing on machines or other movements I was doing became non-existent in my routine. I was exercises that I was doing on machines or other movements I was doing became non-existent in my routine. I was doing everything around the deadlift and movements to contribute to the deadlift only. In other words, I went from being the guy who did lying leg curls, at least one to three times a week, every week for years and years and years in my training career, and got to a point where I don't even remember what it was on the machine, but let's just

say for arguments, say, it was a hundred pounds that I could do leg curls for 15 reps. It took me years to progress to that weight. Then I start deadlifting all the time to get good at it to completely let that machine alone, didn't touch it for over a year and a half, almost two years. And I'll never forget the day I got on the lying leg crow machine after not doing it for two years. And remembering putting the pin in and going like, I'm going to be really weak because I haven't done this forever. And I remember each set, I was like, what the hell? And it was, it was, I was like five times stronger on this machine that I've been doing my whole life

three times a week to get stronger at, but because I had neglected deadlift so much, which contributed way more to my hamstring strength than anything, even an isolated movement like that, which you really feel just in your hamstrings. The deadlift is such a great movement, and it's not just for your hamstrings, there's so many other major muscles.

So it will light bulb went off for me for the first time ever on, whoa, what when you do movements like the squat, like the deadlift, like the overhead press, yeah, it works these specific muscles like the hamstrings, but it works so many others, and it contributes so much to the central nervous system so well that there's so much carryover and strength.

It makes a huge, I noticed this years ago with barbell rows, it was a period there where I was trying to just get stronger with barbell rows, me and my buddy were competing. And I got my barbell row, I don't remember what I got it up to, it was like 300 something pounds and I would do it for six reps. And I remember I hadn't done like isolated dumbbell curls in a while, I had done just lots of barbell rows to get stronger. I went and did barbell curls or dumbbell curls

and I could not believe how strong my biceps were and I had always done curls, you know, and I just couldn't believe I was like 15 pounds stronger in my curls because my barbell, my barbell row had gotten so much better. So it's important that you look at these compound movements. It also reminds me of a lot of the female clients that I would get that wanted to build their butt. And I would see them doing all these kickbacks and yeah, all these like isolation, high

reps, jump squats, they're doing all these things. And I would tell them, like, well, how often are you squatting? What variations of the squat are you doing during the week? And how much are you actually overloading the squat and trying to build your squat strength up to actually develop the glutes? And then, well, you know, I squat once or twice a week. And it's like, okay, let's eliminate all these little

bullshit movements. And I'm going to start getting you to focus on the squat and a sumo stance, deadlift, and watch what happens. I mean, we eliminate all those little butt burner exercises that everybody loves to share on Instagram and start getting them to do these compound lifts more frequently and starting to overload them and increase the weight on them and blow blows up out of nowhere.

These compound exercises, it just requires you to allocate more resources. It demands more of your central nervous system. And so for just getting the most bang out of your buck and getting your muscles to then adjust to this demand, it really does the forced growth. It builds the most muscle and it gives you the best results. And here's the other part, frequency contributes better to strength than less frequent, more intense workouts, which is why I'm always in support.

Now, you may show some studies that say volume, you know, is really ultimately what matters, for muscle growth and all that, okay, whatever, but studies show pretty clearly that practicing movements frequently is going to make you stronger at them. So I'll give you guys a great example. I oftentimes get messages from women who are asking me how they can get better at pull-ups. Like I want to be able to do better pull-ups. I want to be able to do more than two pull-ups. So what I'll tell them is I'll say, look, put up a pull up bar in your bedroom, in your doorway. And every time you walk by it, you know,

do like one pull up. Like, not, don't work out, don't go crazy, but just practice pull ups every time you walk by it. And they're always blown away at how fast they get stronger. Like, I'm talking double their strength in a very short period of time. So, where I'm going with this is, when you go to the gym,

take these compound movements, these effective movements and just practice them a lot. You don't have to work out crazy and beat yourself up, but go and squat often deadlift often. You don't have to go to pure fatigue either. It's actually more advantageous to leave a few in the tank and to just keep refining that process that moment. Back to the booty point that I'm making and getting my girls to squat more, I would have them do lightweight sometimes. They don't always have to be crushing it on your squats. Sometimes it's you getting you to actually, and here's from the body builder mindset.

Right. Let's do these squats, but now when you're at the bottom of the squat, I want you to really think about driving through your heels, squeezing your butt as you bring your hips forward and stand up in the squat, and teaching that with a really light weight so they get that connection down. And then when we overloaded on the next time we're squatting in that week, holy crap.

Now their glutes are getting really sore, and they're able to load it way more, which is gonna contribute to the overall growth in that muscle. 100%. Now here's the other thing. Mobility. Mobility oftentimes contributes to more strength because mobility oftentimes is the limiting factor to strength. So using myself as an example, when we first started doing mind pump, you know, I did overhead presses as part of my workout, but I never really focused fully on

that full lockout position. I kind of did the body builder type overhead press reps where I would stop like a quarter inch short of full lockout and come back down to keep, you know, quote unquote, tension in my shoulders. Well, then I meet Justin and Justin tells me all about overhead carries. And he talks about mobility exercises for the shoulders like stick dislocates so I started incorporating those into my routine getting stronger at the end-range emotion and increasing my mobility the result of that was a stronger overhead press I had added 15 pounds to an overhead press that had been stuck at a particular weight for a long time because I

improved my mobility that's a great topic in itself is just n-range strength. Yes. And stability. And I think that mobility a lot of times gets confused with flexibility. And I know, I think you just did like a recent Friday Fit Tip about this, but it's such a great point to make because if you think about being able to access range of motion, that's great if you can passively access

this range of motion. But now, how do you get out of this? How can you intrinsically find that strength to be able to move or pick up objects in that range of motion? You don't own it yet. You don't own it yet until you have the strength within that. That's right.

It's not just that. I mean, I think it's even simpler than that. I mean, and I just would use the analogous one as just your origin and insertion of a muscle. So there's the muscle. And do you think we are, we are going to be stronger if we use all of that or half of that. Yeah. And so what requires you to be able to use all that is good mobility is the ability to actually take that muscle through its fullest range of motion. And if you can't take it through its fullest range of motion,

you're not going to get the max out of that muscle. I see this all the time and squatting to your point that you made about the progression that I made in my squat. Not only did I get better at the skill of squatting, but also a lot of my strength and the size of my legs that I'm able to keep now with way less volume is because I'm using more of my leg. That's right. You know, I could barely break 90 degrees just two years ago when I was away. We're now and everybody who follows me on Instagram knows that I can go astagrass in my squat and I'm able to carry as much

of a way. It's amazing how much more your muscles develop as a result too of getting gaining this new strength. Oh, I have to train my legs way less than what I had to before to maintain the size and strength because I'm now using more of it So I'm getting more carefree now. What about diet diet for strength if you want to get stronger You know aside from eating adequate calories. I'll say this if you want to maximize your strength with your diet You probably don't want to go to low carb I know that low carb diets are popular for people for fat loss because maybe they're appetite suppressing

not as conducive to performance. No, I mean, I've done keto joe and I eat keto here and there and I went keto for a very, very long time for gut health issues. And when I reintroduce carbohydrates, I'm just stronger and the evidence is very clear. Yeah. For that type of physical activity, carbohydrates are gonna produce more strength output. If you're a super long endurance type person, where you're using low to moderate levels of energy for long, long periods of time,

ketogenic diets are probably fine, because you can run off of fat. But when you're talking about like explosive exertions of strength and power, carbohydrates. You also have to speak to protein, because if you're not getting adequate protein and you're constantly stretching yourself strength wise and trying to build more muscle, you're going to have a hard time adding muscle.

I mean, you can train and strengthen the central nervous system, which then gets you to fire the muscles more without actually technically growing or building more muscle. But at one point, you're probably going to hit your ceiling without increasing your chlorocantake and making sure that you have adequate protein for repairing that muscle and building, right? Totally, 100%. Now, as far as mistakes are concerned, like why people are not getting stronger, we touched on rep range and what not before. I mean, if you stay in the same rep range all the time, even if it's a powerlifting rep

range, and you just stay in it all the time, that's gonna slow down your progress. You gotta move out of it every once in a while. And move out of your workout programming every once in a while. Like, you know, I noticed this, when I was a kid, when we were kids, it's still kind of like this, right? The way that guys measured their strength

was on one exercise, the bench press. The bench! That was all about how much bench, bro! Yeah, all about how much you could bench, right? Yeah. Which is funny considering this other exercise that are probably better indicators, but nonetheless, it was a popular one. And so I did a lot of bench press because I wanted to get a higher bench. And I'll never forget, you know, my bench press was stuck at a particular weight for a long,

long time. And I'll never forget, for aesthetic reasons, I changed to incline bench press, and I started doing more dumbbells, and it had nothing to do with me wanting a higher bench. It was all about, I want better aesthetics. The funny thing is, I went back to bench press after a few months of going away from it and doing these other movements, and I guess what?

I had a stronger bench press. So doing the same things all the time, and not doing anything else to mix it up, probably one of the biggest mistakes. I don't even like saying all the time because I think people hear that and they're like, well, I don't really do that. I kind of switch it up. It's, there's a sweet spot. There's a reason why all of the maps programs are broken up in this three to four week phase. And there's, there's reason behind why we do that, not just to keep you from getting bored. The most optimal time that you would like to stay

with a program, meaning the same type of exercises, the same rep range, you wanna fall somewhere in that three to six weeks tops. Once you get beyond that, unless you're training for a skill or a sport or like a specific lift, it's different, right? If you're a power lifter and you're dead lifting, is it a petition?

Right, totally different. But if you're looking for just, you're trying power lifter and you're deadlifting, is it a petition? Totally different. But if you're looking for just, you're trying to build overall strength, trying to change your body, change your body composition. 100% if you haven't been changing your exercises or your rep range on a four to six week basis, you should be, and that's one of the easiest ways for you to start to notice a difference in your strength.

And your body composition for sure. What about strength tools, like people who use wrist wraps and belts and like bench shirts and things like that? Knee wraps and a lot of stuff. Fake strength. Yeah, totally. I'd say it's dangerous, right?

I mean, especially like, I've worked out with somebody who used wrist wraps a lot and it didn't have access to them. And we started to deadlift or even start using heavy dumbbells and we're doing like a dumbbell press and just didn't have the wrist strength that it was applying.

And so like, had to go down substantially from the dumbbells that previously would be able to do with wrist wraps. I remember the first time I used knee wraps, I was blown away over how much more I could squat. But was it that I was stronger or was it that I had knee wraps that made me stronger? So it's not really showing you that you're stronger. It's just making you stronger through the use of some of these aids.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but also don't fool yourself. I think that's the big message here. Don't fool yourself just because you're, you know, someone says, yeah, I got stronger, I had a 20 pounds on my squat, but they're not considering that they squatted without knee wraps and now they're squatting with knee wraps. Well, I mean, it could potentially be a bit of a dangerous situation, though, too. You know, like think of it as replacing mobility. So this is taking the place of it to where in,

you go to grab something, you go to do something you normally would have the strength to apply, but now you're leaving your joints a little more vulnerable as a result. Oh, well, I mean, if you're somebody that values your strength and your fitness in the real world as well. Yeah. Well, here's what happens.

If you always train with all of these tools, a belt, knee wraps, wrist straps, whatever, always, always, always, when you're going to need to call upon your strength in the real world and you don't have these tools, your risk of injury goes up. So the belt is a good example. The belt changes the recruitment pattern of the core. It changes from, without the belt, your core braces and pulls in a little bit. With the belt, your

core pushes out against the belt to create this internal stability. Well, that pushing out movement without a belt is catastrophic for core stability. If you don't have a belt on and you're pushing out, you're going to lose stability. So now you're in the real world, you try to lift something heavy. Don't got your belt, but you've trained that pattern so much. I remember when I learned this lesson as a trainer, I had a client who, and this was before,

I really understood how wide this was so important. This part of the lesson was getting a client who got injured. And I remember he used to train with his belt all the time. I loved to lift heavy, lift heavy, lift heavy, lift heavy. And he threw his back out, throwing an 80 pound dog food bag over that. But he could squat and deadlift well over three, four hundred pounds. That's a perfect example.

And that's exact. And what happens is it, you know, I deadlift three, four hundred pounds, like what's an 80 pound dog food bag? Not a big deal. I could easily throw that up. But because you're so used to hinging with this support of a belt and pushing your core out to support your spine to do this movement. And now you don't have it. So you allow some 80 pound light weight for you to throw your back out.

Now, that's just one example. But that's where you hear this a lot of times. Happens all the time, man. Right. And so, for me, that was when that light bulb really went off, like, wow, okay, I don't want to allow my client, even if we do use a belt, it can't be something that we do all the time. And in fact, I would really like to train him for most of the way with no belt, and maybe

when we're stretching him on the, or her, on the, you know, heaviest weight they've ever done, maybe I'll strap them up with a belt so they can use it for there to maybe protect them during that one lift, but for a majority of their lifting, I want to make sure that they still got real world strength or not dependent on these tools to be able to do it because what ends up happening is you fool yourself in a thinking you're stronger than what you really are

without that belt. And when you say fool yourself, you're not just fooling your conscious self, you're fooling your unconscious self, you're fooling your central nervous system because your CNS is used to you generating so much power and generating power with a particular kind of recruitment pattern, but you don't have the tool there

to bolster it, boom, injury. So now you got, like you said, the guy throwing the 80 pound bag of dog food, his body doesn't have those governors, you know, it doesn't have the governor's proper. Its governors are based on a belt, belt wasn't there, and you heard himself. I mean, at the end of the day, getting stronger is almost always a good thing, regardless of your goal,

if you're trying to get leaner, if you're, of course, trying to build muscle, if you're trying to speed up into albism, or if you're just trying to become a better athlete, of course, context matters, you need to improve your skills as well. Strength is usually a good thing, which is why I think it should be the number one, one of the number one, if not number one thing,

that you measure in terms of your objective metrics in terms of is your workout successful. Look at strength. And with that, go to minepumpFree.com and download our guides. They're all absolutely free. You can also find us on Instagram. You can find Justin at MindPump Justin. You can find me at MindPump Sal and Adam at MindPump Adam. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle

at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having

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